K IM READY TO GO NOW

This week I've had some nice little (not too epic) breakthroughs in my thinking about things, and I'm feeling much more chill about some pieces of my life.

Initially I was really worried about leaving Iowa because I was sad to be missing out on bonds kids have with their classmates when they go to one school all four years. I realized I was creating a bond with my friends, my school, and my surroundings in general, a bond I don't have, just to have an identity for all my confused/scared/anxious energy one has in thinking about moving to somewhere new. I'm not sad to be leaving anymore now that I understand I was synthesizing emotional attachment to everything I'm being pulled from. I'm looking forward to Portland. What I'm happy doing, there is a lot of out there. What I've been keeping busy with around here...is nice, but it's not like what'll go down for me in Portland.

So there was one week I kept just accidentally sleeping through my first (second, third...) class(es... UGH I KNOW STOP JUDGING), which was really horrible because I mean wow, what a way to wake up: with three absences already tacked down for the day upon waking. I dunno, that was a weird time. I'm trying to overcome my disgusting habit of coming home from school, sleeping until 6pm, spending hours on tumblr, then going to bed. If you didn't notice, that shudder-worthy-ingly short list did not include any healthy things I enjoy, like practicing the instruments my family has paid for and for me to learn or doing homework or even just staying awake. So I think I'm getting better. I'm not sleeping all day anymore and I'm back to having enough time to make myself a nutritional lunch in the morning instead of just eating the greasy cafeteria food. It's not a lot of progress, but progress nonetheless and I'm happy about it.

ayyy lmao

I finished a pencil and watercolor self portrait, a little 8"x10" thing. About a month ago my mom was telling me how she was upset that I wasn't remembering to text her enough, and I got really beaten down thinking about that, so I just took a few deep breaths and started outlining my face in the mirror. I felt better. I filled everything in and colored it recently, I really like it.

I found lots of amazing art Sunday on booooooom, including this crazy video. I like how booooooom described it as, "a feast for the ears and eyes". It's a pretty crazy video.

I discovered Camille Sithwick, whose artwork reminds me of my entire life at once, somehow, so that's cool. 

Then Brian Brown. He paints a lot of people not looking right into your eyes, unlike most portraits, but they're also not looking at the obvious signs of destruction or pain right behind them. The people in Brown's work are just completely missing all this shit breaking loose... right behind them. His paintings are pretty effective in getting you to be frustrating with these people.

Finally, my favorite discovery of Sunday is Russian artist Rita Voloh whose drawings have just utterly blown my mind in the most captivating way. In general, as an artist, I'm often blown away by anything that has lots depth and demonstration of skill. Her work is the type that you can stare at for eternity and be content the whole time, because you're constantly uncovering new clues and pieces of the story. She is brilliant without a doubt. I love her clever ways of suggesting some pretty freaky shit so playfully. Basically there's just so much going on in every piece, and she has so many! I'm really happy about her work. I love all of it. 

nostalgia and some crying

Yesterday I performed with my school's original choral reading, a type of theatre arts piece that involves vocal effects (multiple people saying a line in unison, one person saying a line, rippling the lines, etc) and a bit of song/choreography to tell a story, at the IHSSA All-State Festival at Iowa State University.

performed in this auditorium, heyyy shawty
actually this is a replicate selfie of one taken from last year's festival:

****nostalgia****

IHSSA stands for Iowa High School Speech Association, an association that I basically am forever indebted to for giving me the opportunity to create beautiful pieces of art with my school and friends. To be brief in this explanation, nearly 500 schools and 40,000 students across Iowa compete in 12 different events (categories/styles like group improv, musical theatre, mime) at the district level, then state level, then at the All-State Festival, where only 20 groups in each of the 12 categories are still in the game. By that point you're mostly just psyched to be there, the competition aspect is nearly gone, though not entirely--a judge for each category picks one school that they liked the best to win the banner, a huge, old, silk banner embroidered with the logo and everything. I was in choral reading last year too, and we won the banner for that performance. I cried for an hour.

see ugly crying by long-haired freshman wearing all black hahaha

THE GREEN ONE WAS OURS

This year we didn't, we didn't for any of our events. For most schools in Iowa it's not saying much to have left the festival without a banner, though West High is definitely a big name in the Iowan large group theatre crowd, so it was a little disappointing to leave without another year of possessing one of those silken beauties.

costume and makeup

The whole day I kept thinking about how I'll never perform in another one of these things again, per this whole thing where I'm moving to Oregon this summer, and I kept making myself sad about that. I   cried a little right before we went on stage (ugh) but was mostly at peace about it. I spent the drive home talking to my friend in the dark about things like which cities we want to move to and our experience with coming to our school as the new kid.

I went to bed at like 11, probably the earliest in two months. There was an after-party, but idk that was an awkward thing for me because the host seemed to want me to be there but no one assisted in figuring out how to actually get me there, and I ended up just going home. Kind of lame of them to just to leave me without any way of getting to the thing they were all discussing, but that's sort of how high school goes. I had an overwhelming and happy day.

INTRO POST

I'm Michaela and I am taking a running start kind of jump really far down off something really high with this and I am starting this blog. I guess since I've spent so many late nights - that go as far back as 6th grade - pretending to be forgetting homework and losing precious kid-sleep over eclectic little blogs, I've always wanted to be as cool as their authors with their keen fashion eyes and dip dyed hair (whoa, right?). Wow, no I definitely still want to be like them. To be fair, I'd be lying if I said I hadn't tried out blogging in my past, but I think the last time I truly did that was in 8th grade when I made a little website for taking care of pets. Like.. I had a thing for learning about the care of household pets so I wrote about what I found out on the ~~interwebs~~... in middle school? Wow, yeah I don't know. AND WOW OH MY GOD AM I STRAYING OR WHAT

Where was I even going with that, uuh okay well yes, so I've wanted to be like the cool blogger girls I based myself off of since before time (middle school ayy) and save for a couple trials that ended in errors, I haven't thrown myself onto the internet in a while. Hooray for the throwing of oneself onto the internet, no?

So who the gosh diddly darn is this ranting child you're doubtfully still paying attention to? Whoooo? WHO IS SHE? Dude I totally have no idea, but I can describe a little of what my goals are for this, sure.

The main pull I had towards starting a blog was that I've been getting hit more and more with just tropical storms of ideas and concepts and words and colors.. so many things all at once. Most of the time I'll maybe vaguely tweet in reference to my artfeels instead of making them into (#)artreals (hahahahhaaaaaa yeah), you feel? So by the end of the night I've been on tumblr for hours and I've lost a couple of my more sports-orientated twitter followers and, I mean, what's up with that? I shouldn't accept that, right? Right. So I'm giving myself a big ol' blank space for my paintings and new ideas that are too heavy to shove into 140 characters. Because sometimes I feel like there's no reason for me to continue creating when there's nothing coming from it, when it's pretty obvious to me that that is something very important.

So what can you expect as a reader? Novel question. Good work, man. Probably lots of thought posts, watercolors, sketches, school projects I'm proud of, things found, photos. I sometimes wish I had something I was especially interested in I could focus my posts on, but truly there is no one thing for me. I really like fashion, art, music, and different approaches to thinking/creating, so I guess if that's close enough to a central theme, that's as much as you'll be getting. Right now I'm less interested in appealing to an audience/being a useful resource for something specific, and more interested in keeping track of myself as an intellectually active human.

So let's see what happens here. It'll be fun.

Michaela